Dinosaur footprints

I went on a short one-day trek to visit some incredible dinosaur footprints yesterday. There are literally thousands of footprints of several different types of dinosaur clearly visible on a vertical rock wall.

The footprints were exposed when the local cement factory chopped a huge chunk out of a hillside. Based on the geology in the area, the experts reckon there are likely to be thousands more footprints hidden in layers underneath. It's quite amazing really.

To view the footprints (from about 70m or so away), you go to a dinosaur museum. The museum is a hilarious farce. There are lifesized fibreglass models of various dinosaurs in a little park. To add to the experience, the curators have added sound effects of dinosaurs calling. Our guide kindly noted that the sound effects and the skin colour of the dinos were not 'real'. I know I was surprised.

After seeing the dinosaur footprints, the rest of the day was spent trekking through rural hills, purportedly to see 7 waterfalls. Unfortunately it's the dry season, and only one waterfall actually had water flowing over it.

But the waterfalls were really just incidental to the fun of walking through tiny villages, greeting the local dogs, and enjoying the views. Great day - photos to follow later.

(Update 25/09 - uploading photos from our camera to flickr is an incredibly slow chore with the upload speeds around these parts... I'm most likely to add photos once I'm back in Aus, if our camera doesn't get stolen in between times. Instead I have uploaded this photo of a woman and a pig, taken just hours after seeing dinosaur footprints. Their footprints could be just as archaelogically significant in a few million years, and you're seeing them NOW).

While I remember, there are a couple of bits and pieces I wanted to blog the shit out of just for Kirsten and I to remember some amusing stuff when we look back...

A middle-aged Englishman gave us the best cringe-laugh we've had in months. We were in a chocolate shop (delicious) along with this bumbling Brit and his travelling companions. As he was leaving, he decided to ask where the local market was. Speaking to the local Spanish-speaking staff, he asked loudly in English, with a pronounced southern accent "Market? Market? Stalls? Vegetables?" I can't imagine anyone who would know the word 'stalls' after not understanding the word 'market'. One of his buddies saved him by pulling the word 'mercado' out of nowhere.

Another thing that amused me greatly was a recent protest in Sucre. It was apparently a protest against racism, which of course is an honourable cause. What I particularly enjoyed was the frequent explosions of sticks of dynamite and burning of tyres in the street to make the point.

They seem to love a good protest here - we actually saw two unrelated protests bump into each other at an intersection. The police had to direct protests as if they were traffic.

At the same time, the roads into and out of La Paz are blocked indefinitely by striking miners.

Sucre

We moved into the apartment we had rented, but the place was a bit of a disaster. It hadn't been cleaned and the hot water was busted. It could have been ok if the owners had fixed these problems. Unfortunately, when we told them that it was dirty and needed a good clean, the owner's brother-in-law turned up with a cloth and told us we could have just bought it ourselves from the supermarket. We only realised a couple of days later, when no cleaner had turned up, that the gifted cloth was the solution to the cleaning problem.

And then there was the hot water: after a couple of days of being told that we just weren't doing it right, we left. It was a big relief.

Since moving into a hostal a few doors down we've been to see some incredible, colourful and energetic street parades for the Festival of the Virgen de Guadalupe. The festival seems like it's been going on for almost two weeks, but apparently all the music, fireworks, dancing and costumes until today have just been practices.

Some of the costumes are incredible. Kirsten reckons Lady Gaga must have got the ideas for her stage costumes from the Bolivian festival outfits. They are bright, sparkly, silky and extravagant. The dancing's pretty cool too; beyond description. I'm a much better spectator than I would be a participant.

I've read that there's another festival next weekend, so we'll have to dust off the camera for that. We're lucky to be here at such an exciting time of year. The attached photo is the only one I've been able to download so far - working on dialup speeds and losing patience!

La Paz, Sucre and fuked policemen

We had read and heard a lot of bad things about La Paz, so I guess we were always likely to be pleasantly surprised. I'd been totally paranoid about getting pickpocketed or having my bag slashed. I walked around the whole time wearing my big jacket with my money in an internal pocket and my bag strapped to my chest like a baby, despite it being uncomfortably warm. Unsurprisingly, we didn't have any problems and I felt like I was a disgrace to carefree backpacker culture.

We didn't do any sightseeing, but in  the short time we were in La Paz, we managed to visit Namas Té vegetarian restaurant twice. Vegan items are marked on the menu. Yay food. We'll probably go back for the delicious jugs of fresh juice next time we're passing through. Yummo. The food was ok, but not worthy of more than a few words: tacos, guacamole, chips, rissoles.

We pottered around for the day after checking out of our hotel. We were booked on an overnight bus to Sucre, so had time to waste until 7pm. We kept it low key - just wandered around, had coffee and food, then back to the hotel lobby to collect our bags and steal their WiFi.

The bus was quite modern and had fully reclining comfy seats (for anyone up to about 1.75m). They are a relatively necessary luxury for a 13 hour overnight trip. Even more necessary when 13 hours becomes 17 hours due to roadworks blocking the road for 4 hours from midnight. The bus just stopped, turned off the engine, and the driver said nothing. Ever. We only found out what was going on by overhearing key words from other passengers, like 'puta', 'cuatros horas' and 'blockiera'.

We got to Sucre around 1130am and went looking for a taxi. A helpful sign told us the maximum agreed fare to city addresses. It also warned us to beware of 'fuked policemen' who might ask for our passports in an attempt to steal them or our money. That would have been fuked for sure.

As a result of the bus delay, the woman who had been waiting to let us into our apartment wasn't there. This was inconvenient. We had a couple of phone numbers for her, but no phone to call from. We found a nearby hostel where the dude only spoke Spanish (how dare he?) and asked to use the phone. He was really helpful and tried the numbers we had. No answer.

We also had a number for a guy in the US who owns the place, but weren't going to ask the dude to call a US number out of charity, especially when we were unable to adequately explain why we were trying to make these calls. We decided to book into the hostel for the night. The dude showed us a double room with an ash tray in it. I told him we wanted non-smoking, so he showed us a twin room with an identical ash tray. We took it.

I tried to call the guy in the US from the hostel room, but international calling was blocked. So I went to the computer in the lobby to email him a revised plan. The internet was so slow it wouldn't load my hotmail account. Eventually I remembered that he had a web form to contact him with enquiries about the apartment. Thankfully it worked and he called me at the hostel to sort out access. Bit of a trial though.

We've just booked in for two weeks of Spanish lessons commencing Monday. Looking forward to being able to communicate a bit better and sit in one place while we get used to S. America.

Sleptomaniac -> Santiago -> La Paz

As anticipated, we had a trying last few days in Melbourne as we got ourselves organised to go. It was all very tiring. I managed to get an acid burn on my arm (from oven cleaner), a cut on my head (from banging it on a garage door), and a badly bruised elbow (from a washing machine incident).

We had some late nights and early starts for a wee while, stealing a few hours of sleep wherever we could. Then tried again to get some sleep on the flight to Santiago. I managed about an hour because the guy next to me seemed to think he had paid for a quarter of my seat too. No personal space. And he was smelly.

We arrived in Santiago a bit wasted. We got to our hotel about 1130am, then slept from 130pm until 630am the next morning. Stole almost a whole day of sleep.

Well rested, we headed straight for the funicular up Cerro San Cristobal to a big statue of the Virgin Mary. Unfortunately the funicular was undergoing repairs, so we had to walk up. The path up goes all the way around the hill, then zigzags up the side. And it's a long walk - 5km or so uphill. Most of that time the Virgin was out of sight - Kirsten reckoned she was playing hard to get.

The view from the top was smoggy and generally pants. But the walk was good.

The next morning we headed back to the airport to get our flight to La Paz. The drive from La Paz Airport down to the city was pretty amazing. This is a photo of the view that doesn't do it justice.

We head to Sucre tomorrow on the overnight bus. Looking forward to some Spanish lessons there.